The Reaganist Apocalypse in Tony Kushner's Angels in America
Bildiriler > Özet Bildiri · 2010
Yazarlar: Nesrin YAVAŞ
1st International Akşit Göktürk Conference Visions of the Future: Now and Then, Türkiye, İstanbul, Uluslararası, Sözlü Sunum, Özet Bildiri, 2010-2010, ss 17-18
Özet
<p><br></p><p><strong>The Reaganist Apocalypse inTony Kushner's Angels in Amerİca</strong></p><p>Guy, Jewish, leftist American playwright Tony Kushner,s Angels in America</p><p>exemplifies the late twentieth-century American sense of apocalypse in sexual,</p><p>political, moral and social dilemmas afflicting different identities based on race,</p><p>religion, gender and political parameters. Reaganism, which was actually a</p><p>conglomeration of discourses about the family, the economy, national identity,</p><p>morality, perfection, human nature, women and sexuality, denied and/or repressed</p><p>traumas of American history (such as 1960s counter-culture movements, the</p><p>Holocaust) and attempted to restore the mythical American perfectionist sense. It</p><p>supported "traditional family values" in the midst of the AIDS pandemic, passed laws</p><p>(1987 Helms Amendment) outlawing representations of sex outside the confines of</p><p>heterosexual monogamy, represented AIDS as "the homosexuals, holocaust,,, opposed</p><p>affirmative action programs for African Americans, believed in traditional gender</p><p>roles' In other words, Reaganism restored America to its rightful place as ,oachieved</p><p>utopia," as "heaven," where there is ecstacy in consumerism, a sense of community</p><p>without divisions. For Reaganist ideology, the turbulent 1960s and its ..devastating,,</p><p>results were apolcalyptic. For Tony Kushner, on the other hand, Reagan,s America is</p><p>faced with substarıtial societal, moral and spiritual issues at the down of the new</p><p>millennium. For him, this is not the Edenic but the demonic America tumbling</p><p>towards an apocalypic end. what Kushner aims to unfold is the hypocricy and</p><p>falseness of Reaganist ideology, and to argue for a reordering of American society,</p><p>based upon a progressive and humanist doctrine that draws its strength from the</p><p>lessons of the past. This paper focuses on Tony Kushner's revelation of late twentiethcentury</p><p>American sense of apocalypse as opposed to utopic Reaganist discourses of</p><p>perfectionism and harmony by way of dealing with a number of substantial issues in</p><p>current American society: the moral and social dilemmas over homosexuality, the</p><p>clash of religious beliefs and social reality, the polarity of American politics and the</p><p>AIDS endemic.</p>